This July TikTok made headlines when announcing it would pay out their creators directly by initiating a $200 million Creators Fund. Not giving many specifics the social media platform only announced that creators would receive regular payments over a year and the fund would grow in the future. The goal of the fund is to award creators with additional earnings, rewarding the time and dedication they put into their videos.
In August they announced the first creators that would receive monetary gains from the new Creators Fund. The first 19 creators were a mix of already popular influencers and TikTokers without a media background that succeeded in gaining a substantial following on the app. For their decision to fund known and big influencers like David Dobrik the app was criticized, as the goal of the fund was stated to support creators that “are seeking opportunities to foster a livelihood”. It remained unclear how the fund would be payed out, yet TikTok announced their criteria for being eligible to receive funding. The creators must be over 18 years old, have at least 10k followers on TikTok, amassed at least 10k views in the last 30 days and post original content while also complying with the community guidelines. In addition, they announced to increase the fund to $1 billion in the next three years. Currently, the fund is only operating in the US. However, the social media app aims to launch the fund globally as well.
Now that the fund has been launched for a little over a month creators that initially were hyped about the fund are now complaining about the payouts. According to them they only earn a few dollars even if their videos reach views of ten of thousands or hundreds of thousands views. TikTok itself continues to remain quiet about how payouts are calculated. Thus, leading to wild speculations from creators. Some say their views have dropped since joining the fund. They claim the social media platform limits their views to limit payouts. Two creators have already left the fund. The platform denies these allegations and claims that decreases in views are coincidental. Additionally, the platform stated, that the payouts are not solely based on views but take other factors like video engagement and region where the video was seen into account. It will be interesting to see how TikTok can improve their payouts and receive the approval of the creators.
The biggest social media platform known to share money with creators is YouTube. However, the platform also has faced many and similar controversies to TikTok over their monetization model. Instagram has started to share ad revenue for some videos only earlier this year. It will be interesting to see how and if Instagram reacts to the Creator Fund. Influencers and creators are big drivers of traffic on social media platforms. Platforms like Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter rely on influencers, even more than TikTok, as on their platform’s users choose whom to follow. Whereas TikTok relies on their algorithm to deliver users with content they like. It will be an interesting development to watch as platforms battle to be the most lucrative for creators. Maybe creators will even sign exclusive contracts for a platform in the future as gamers already do? How do you see the importance of content creators for social media platforms?
Sources:
Alexander, J. (23. July 2020). The Verge. From TikTok is launching a $200 million fund to pay creators for their videos: https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/23/21335404/tiktok-creators-monetization-fund-followers-youtube-content-videos
Alexander, J. (10. August 2020). The Verge. From TikTok announces first wave of creators set to receive payment for their videos: https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/10/21362060/tiktok-creators-fund-recipients-david-dobrik-brittany-tomlinson-youtube-adsense
Matsakis, L. (9. September 2020). Wired. From TikTok Is Paying Creators. Not All of Them Are Happy: https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-creators-fund-revenue-sharing-complaints/
Interesting blog! I have been quite distant to the use of TikTok as I see so many children trying to raise likes and followers. I believe the role of content creators is very important and the best should be founded for their hard work. At the same time, by founding the best content creators, you create a performance and creativity gap between experienced creators who have many tools which can develop their ideas, and new creators who are at the start of their journey. You cannot put creators in the same category, as you cannot put movies in the same category. There are categories for short movies, international movies, etc. What TikTok has launched can be seen as discriminating, by funding well known content creators and leaving everyone else behind.